Canonical wants to collect telemetry in Ubuntu

by Daniel Draga ·
Published February 20, 2018
· Updated February 19, 2018

In order to improve its development on Ubuntu, the Linux distributor Canonical wants to automatically collect user hardware information as well as information about installed packages and crash reports.

“We want to be able to focus our development efforts on the things that matter most to our users, and to do that, we need to get some more data about the types of setup our users have and what software run it on, “ writes Canonical for the Ubuntu desktop Will Cooke on the developer mailing list of the Linux distribution.

Begin with the upcoming version 18.04 aka Bionic Beaver. Ubuntu wants to inform in the installer of the system about this process with an additional field. Users should also be given the opportunity to opt-out. In a similar way, for example, the browsers Firefox or Chrome collect telemetry data from their users. The analysis of the data Canonical wants to make publicly available.

The data should be encrypted and transferred to the servers of Ubuntu. Users should be able to see the data collected on their computer. The team is interested in the Ubuntu version and variant used, hardware details such as CPU family, memory and memory size, display resolution, GPU manufacturer and model, and the OEM manufacturer of the device. Also, some more information that will help with the installation process will be collected.

In addition, the popularity contest (Popcon) should be automatically installed, giving the team a better overview of installed packages. The tool for handling crash reports Apport should also be configured to automatically send its data anonymously.